The following is a petition to the city council of Centerville:
"Over the past three years, there has been a marked increase in cases of 'sidewalk rage,' similar to the irrational anger drivers experience on the road, but instead among sidewalk walkers. The result is an increase in assaults, property damage, and disruptions of normal pedestrian traffic. In order to address this growing problem, the council must ban cell phone use on sidewalks. Not only do people texting or using their phones slow down pedestrian traffic, but they are also more likely to walk into the road or bump into other walkers. Children are especially vulnerable because they are too short to be easily seen. Middletown passed such a ban and not only have they heard no complaints, but the reported incidents of sidewalk crime has gone down significantly."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
In the written petition, author is stating that anger amongst the sidewalkers is leading to assaults, property damage and disruptions of normal pedestrian traffic. As a solution to this problem, authour demands the council of centerville to ban cell phone use by people on sidewalks. This might lead to a solution, however there are three unwarrented assumptions made by author which need to be clarified before this petition can be stated strong enough.
Firstly, author assumes that mobile phone has been the primary reason why the assaults, property damage and disruptions of normal pedestrian traffic are being observed. If this assumption fails to hold true, then even after implementing ban on cell phone use on sidewalks, crime rate would not diminish. This would weaken the argument.
Again, author makes an assumption that this observation has where cell phones are stated as the primary cause for the mentioned problems, he assusmes that cell phones were being used excessively in the last three years. What if the cell phone introduction to the sidewalkers would have occured only in the last one or two years. If so, the mentioned problems which are being seen from the last three years cannot be completely reasoned to the cell phone usage. Hence, bannig of cell phone use would again not result in diminished crime. This weakens the petition
Lastly, author compares the situation of Middletown with that of Centerville. What if the behaviour of people in both the places are different. In such a scenario, it might not hold true that people in Centerville will also behave in the same way of how the people in Middletown did. They may not behave properly leading to same state situations as before. Hence making cell phone use on sidewalks ban, would not prove beneficial. This again weakens the petition.
The petition, as it stand now, is flawed due to certain unwarrented assumptions which are mentioned above. If the author is able to provide justification for each of the above mentioned assumption, then we can conclude that banning cell phone use on sidewwalks will reduce assaults, property damage and disruptions of normal pedestrian traffic.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 355 350
No. of Characters: 1771 1500
No. of Different Words: 169 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.341 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.989 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.603 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 125 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 88 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 65 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.684 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.52 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.632 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.319 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.523 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.091 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 358, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...ing to same state situations as before. Hence making cell phone use on sidewalks ban,...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, hence, however, if, lastly, may, so, then, in the same way
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 11.1786427146 36% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 44.0 55.5748502994 79% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1824.0 2260.96107784 81% => OK
No of words: 355.0 441.139720559 80% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.13802816901 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.34067318298 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.69058472851 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 179.0 204.123752495 88% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.504225352113 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 560.7 705.55239521 79% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 2.0 8.76447105788 23% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 56.0644470429 57.8364921388 97% => OK
Chars per sentence: 101.333333333 119.503703932 85% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.7222222222 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.44444444444 5.70786347227 78% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0657477957521 0.218282227539 30% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.024265038108 0.0743258471296 33% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0261147609549 0.0701772020484 37% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0396595212044 0.128457276422 31% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0325579509376 0.0628817314937 52% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.6 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.53 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.09 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 79.0 98.500998004 80% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 16.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.